While the Government reports almost daily on the arrival of new lots of vaccines against Covid to the country, in parallel there is a reality that seems to go against the grain of that enthusiasm: according to the registry of the Public Vaccination Monitor, in the first week of October there was a strong low of the daily average of applied doses.
Although Argentina managed to advance with greater momentum during August and September in the amount of second doses applied and has already managed to cover 51 percent of the population, there is still a long way to go to arrive at a more reassuring immunity coverage, which is located around the 70 percent.
When observing the curve of doses applied per day, it is seen how the bubble of the previous two months deflated. During the first week of October, an average of 207,727 doses per day, when in the first week of September he had administered 378.337 every 24 hours. The descent was from 45 percent.
During September the decline was gradual. At the beginning of the month there were several days in which the mark of 400 thousand doses applied. In fact, in the first week, five of the seven days had figures above that number. In the second week, on the other hand, there were no longer more than 400 thousand days.
In the last week of September, six of the seven days had less than 300 thousand inoculations. Already in October, the first day of the month was the most abundant, with 283,496 punctures, and then the applications experienced that drop that now rounds a poor weekly average of 207 thousand doses.
This decline contrasts with the periodic information on vaccines arriving in the country. This Thursday, the Government reported on the arrival of 776,880 new doses from Pfizer and celebrated: “In just four days, the country added 4.4 million vaccines against SARS-CoV-2 from the different supplier laboratories.”
With these doses from Pfizer, the country has already received a total of 75,261,055 vaccines. When visiting the Public Vaccination Monitor, it is seen that the doses distributed to the provinces are slightly more than 58.7 million. And the applied ones, 53.7 million.
This means that between the doses applied and those that arrived in Argentina there is already a distance of 21.5 million doses. If the 10 million Sinopharm that were separated to be applied in children aged 3 to 11 years are subtracted, the difference is still significant: 10.5 million vaccines in stock.
The recent arrival of Pfizer vaccines to Ezeiza. Photo: Presidency.
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Of this total, the number of doses held by the provinces and not applied are 5 million doses, of which 1.5 million are in the province of Buenos Aires. The City of Buenos Aires, La Pampa and San Luis, according to the records, are still the only districts that are up to date.
Son striking stocks of Misiones (400 thousand doses); Between Ríos, Salta, Corrientes and Chaco (300 thousand each); and Jujuy and Santa Cruz (100,000 each). Santa Fe has almost 300 thousand doses in stock, and Córdoba and Mendoza, 200 thousand. The rest of the provinces have stocks of reasonable doses for their share in the distribution.
The rate of vaccination had begun to accelerate in August, when the Government promised to apply 7 million second doses during that month and he complied. Then, that figure was slightly exceeded in September, so that between the two months mwings of 14 million Argentines they were able to see their schematics completed.
Now, in the first week of October, only 1,396,049 have been applied. If this rate is projected for the entire month, it would mean a total of 6,181,485 doses, almost a million less than in August. It will be necessary to see if what happened in the last days has been just a temporary bump and in the next few, the operation recovers a healthier rhythm.
Vaccination has been enabled for adolescents from 12 to 17 years old with Pfizer and the same will happen shortly with the boys from 3 to 11, with Sinopharm. At the same time, people living in hard-to-reach places are being vaccinated with doses of Cansino. From that laboratory, the country has already received 600,000 doses, but for now it has only applied 74,966.
The recurring problem is still the second component deficit Sputnik V and doses of AstraZeneca that still have to arrive in the country. In the case of the Russian vaccine, the deficit of second doses is today of 3.7 million. The British laboratory has yet to send 6.8 million dose of the contract for 22.4 million.
It is difficult to determine how many Argentines will be vaccinated with two doses at the end of October, since from now on the installed capacity of vaccinations and human resources must be distributed between that need and the shifts given to children and adolescents.
It is estimated that Delta variant it would reach an incidence of 20 percent of cases between the first and second week of November. With a properly vaccinated population, the impact of this most dangerous version of Covid it would have less chance of provoking a third wave as devastating as the second was in Argentina.
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